Trading Belief

Abstract

The question of what is it that traders actually do seems endlessly present in the emerging sociology of finance. For Hardie (2004, p. 251), joining, clarifying and critiquing Shleifer, the question is important but misplaced. Misplaced because it distracts attention onto particular types involved in financial markets to the detriment of a more general analysis of ‘what investors actually think and do’ (Shleifer, 2000, p. 183; our emphasis). For others, such as Zaloom (2006) and Knorr Cetina and Bruegger (2000, 2002), the enacting agents of ‘global microstructures’ merit considerable focus in their own right. It is the very specificity of the trading position, so obviously lacking in much prior research, that they believe is most worthy of attention. Still others, perhaps the sources of Hardie’s ire, have gone further – delineating different types of traders and trading strategies, as the investor slips further into the background. Key here would be Buenza and Stark (2005) and their efforts to reinforce distinction between ‘value’ and ‘momentum’ traders in order to hold open a classificatory space for ‘radically deconstructionist’ agents (p. 88) who with their ‘mathematical formulae’ (p. 92) and ‘evaluative principles’ (p. 90), engage in the precise slicing and dicing (p. 88) of ‘modern arbitrage’ (p. 87). Calculation, entanglement, and immersion in screened flow have all been invoked, along with accompanying emotional repertoires (Hassoun, 2005) and bodily disciplines (Zaloom, 2006), which enable and sustain them, in order to grasp the specificity of the trading place and those inhabiting it.